More Video....

Just found the Classic 2-Man. Donnie Beck from Sacramento... YOU ROCK!! Donnie won Grand Classic Men as well as the Classic 2-man with Dane Lewis, and broke at least 3 National Records.

I didn't stay on Dane or Donnie at all (sorry guys). They were so far out front doing a great job, but THE real race to watch was for 2nd, 3rd and 4th. As you will see..... it goes back and forth right up until the end!! Great job to all of the teams.
Linda

On our way home... (Sr 2-Mix Relay attached)

Right now I am sitting in the Omaha, NE airport. One thing that TICKS me off... I have to throw my full, unopened bottle of water away to walk 10 feet through security. If that's the law, so be it. But I absolutely cannot stand the fact that the minute that I am through security none of the vendors are open for business!!

So let's recap this... I get to the airport sometime around 3:45am to return the car. Walk what feels like miles, dragging all the luggage that we needed for 10 days in Lincoln. We had so much stuff that we even sent a 50.5 pound box of "stuff" home. Then we wait in line for 45 minutes for someone from the airline to show up. Now mind you they tell you, you must be at the airport 2 hours ahead of your domestic flight. If you're Josh.... you show up 45 minutes before you take off (thanks to Jay Ingram!!!) and if you're me, you show up at least 2 hours before. So back to the water thing. Now I am finally ticketed and we can go to our gate. Here is where I throw out my perfectly good water that has not been open. Next we pop out the other side and "poof"... no sign of life on the other side!!! I approach the young ladt who is working the News Stand. She says that they will open in 5 minutes. Now that should be 5:00am... the huge coffee shop that overtakes the center of the airport is dark but has 2 employees moving very sloooooowwwww. Maybe they should fix themselves a cup of coffee or even espresso!!! They need to move a little faster! It is now 5:21am and STILL no one is open!!!

Wait.... 5:26am and a sign of life. The light goes on... everyone in the airport rushes to buy stuff. Mind you we board in 4 minutes. Pete purchases water.... he feels like he got the deal of the century.... 2 waters for $3.00. Wow.. that is a good price in an airport. I want to tell the guy that I buy a case of 36 waters for $3.88 at SAM'S club... who are they fooling???!!! It does really tick me off. O.k. now that that is out of the way... here is another video. The last one that I was able to find at this point.

Thanks to all of you who have written me personaly. I am glad that you have enjoyed the videos and photos.

Senior 2-Mix Last 6-8 laps....

Sophomore 2-Mix & Senior 2-Man VIDEO!

Tonight was the last night of the 2008 Indoor National Championships. Hopefully everyone that was here got to purchase their t-shirts and pick out their photos, because it is now too late for people like me... who kept thinking that they would get down there and purchase those shirts and the photos of my skaters. Bummer.... and all of that fantastic racing is gone... until next year in PEORIA, ILLINOIS. I just don't see how they can duplicate this years floor conditions. I think we set a record on the number of records broken.... 86 NEW records broken in the Novice and Standard divisions combined. What an accomplishment!

I was fortunate enough to get some video that I could upload to this site for those that didn't get to watch the LIVE FEED. By the way, that in itself was a huge success. They had double the numbers watching the speed skating this year. It truly was a record Nationals for RECORDS.

Tonight I will start with the Sophomore 2-mix. You will see the last minute and a half of racing........ I was just able to include the Senior 2-Man relay from start to finish (about 8 minutes long). So..... sit down, turn up your sound and listen as Bob Justice calls it wheel by wheel.

UPDATE...

The video of the Pro Men's 5000m final (just the last 4 minutes) is now available in my last post. It is at the bottom of that post.

For those of you that are at home watching on USA Roller Sports LIVE FEED, Ross Creveling and myself may have a treat for you to see. I am working on putting together some of the video from IDN for you to see in SLOW motion! Of course this will depend on if we have a few minutes of down time so that we can use the "play back" method.

So stay tuned..... Linda

DAY 4 - PRO MEN SHAKE THINGS UP

If you know me at all.... you know I have ALWAYS been one who loves great racing!!! Even if it gets a little bit physical, especially in the Pro divisions (Men or Women), I am o.k. with that. We have to remember that these skaters are skating high to mid 8 second laps! That's right folks... for laps on end the men were hitting eight second laps while the women were skating faster than I have ever seen them skate. Emily Scott and Brianna Kramer (who led most of the 30 lap elimination race) were in the high to mid 9 second laps.

When you have that much speed, that many skaters that are equally as good, there is going to be some bumping and grinding when skaters go to pass each other. BUT.... it is when you have skaters who purposely put two hands on the hips in front of them and then pull hips or try and "swim" through other skaters (this is where two skaters are shoulder to shoulder and a third skater puts his or her arms in between skater one and two and pulls them apart so that they can get through). This type of skating is TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!!

This scenario actually happened last night. While the skater in question was finally disqualified on another call, I was unable to get it on my small camera (my small camera is really my 35mm digital camera that does video as a side feature so my filming is a little shaky). This is the camera that I take video on and post on here or YouTube because I can upload it instantly. My real video camera is the one that we make all of our DVD's from. Now on that camera, we DID get that skater and several others doing ridiculous shenanigans!

There was much controversy over the Pro Men's 1500 meter final as well. I would like to say that my husband and I watched that race at least 15-20 times in slow motion. We even plugged our camera into the t.v. in our hotel room so that we could view it at a larger size. I have to say that in order for me to see everything that went on, we played it forward and backward many times. I have to give KUDOS to the referee's this year! They didn't catch all of the fouls, nor did they always foul the right skater..... but whatever they did do, they did because in that MICRO SPLIT SECOND, that is what they felt they saw.

I only have the last 4 minutes and maybe 30 seconds of the Pro Men's 5000 meter race that skated last night. You will hear cheering and you will hear booing. Even after watching the race over and over and off of two different camera angles, the only reason I can think of that the crowd booed was because Team ANSWER took 1st, 2nd and 3rd. BUT as you watch this race..... 1st place is a lap ahead and he moves over and allows 2nd-5th to race it out the last two laps (which in my opinion shows class). My own son is in the race and I can honestly say that again in my opinion every single skater raced it out till the end. It just so happens that the top 3 guys skate for the top team. That's why they are sponsored, because they are so good! So if you want to cheer skaters on... do so because they are the best and if you are going to boo someone... don't do it because they skated well or represent a team that seems to take all of the top honors.... do it because they tried to cheat someone else and let them know we won't ACCEPT that, no matter WHAT uniform they have on!!

By the way.. I know the HYPER BOARD is down. In the meantime, you can write replies on here... I want you to express your opinion, I want you to ask questions and you can even disagree with me or your fellow writer, but absolutely under no uncertain terms will I allow someone to put others down or use foul language. Save that for your OWN blog! Respectfully, Linda Wood

HERE IT IS!!

Day One - INDOOR NATIONALS

They started the morning off with the usual 5 minute warm-ups for each age group. They run through each division twice for a total of 10 minutes of warm-up. As a coach it barely seems like enough time for a skater to roll onto the floor, roll around a few times before it seems like it is the next age groups turn.This is the time a skater is supposed to use to warm-up, roll around and get used to the floor which, by the way has a new coat of roll-on as well as making sure their wheels are going to work. If the skater does not feel comfortable on the floor their first time out and they feel they are going to need to make a wheel change, they only have about 15 minutes from the time they roll off of the floor until their final 5 minute roll around. Although our announcer, Bob Justice, who is probably the best in the business, asks the skaters to skate only their division warm-up, some skaters take serious advantage and skate several warm-up groups. Yesterday there was a classic lady who warmed up with the Junior, Senior, Classic, Grand Classic and World Class ladies. Funny thing is not only is this lady a Classic lady, but she is a Novice Classic lady whose official practice isn't until tomorrow. She wasn't the only one doing this .... there were several Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors (men and women) doing the same thing. But add all of those to the 25-36 skaters that are truly in that division and now you have 50 skaters on the floor at one time trying to accomplish the same thing. It can become total confusion.So now you have a skater who is trying to feel the floor out and doesn't want to sprint the first minute or so that they are out there... and by the time the last group finally gets off of the floor and this group get's completely on.... minus the skaters that don't belong out there, the original skater has about 3 good minutes of skating.The floor looked great when we walked in and from listening to the skaters, I wasn't sure if it would be fast or not. Some skaters were frantically changing wheels. This is common as most rinks do not have fresh roll-on down on their floor and skaters are not used to the tightness and the roll is good but it can slow down much faster than what a skater is typically used to. Once the racing got under way, there was no question whether or not it was fast .... let's face it, from the second race out, the first of several National Records were broken. It's funny... I put this story "on hold" for a few hours so that I could take some photos and come back with results.... and the next thing that I know is that we are now on day 3. Before I realized it, I blinked and it's day 3. I have 4 sets of batteries for my camera that were charged and ready to go when I left home, but have somehow lost their charge so I do not have any photos to put with my story. On top of that things have been so busy with coaching, video taping and the regular meeting of friends that I haven't seen in awhile, that I am way behind! Forgive me for that. I hope that I will be able to bring more news tomorrow.Some names to be listening for: Nicole Lloyd-Ultimate Speed, Scott Stubblefield-Washington, Zach Lloyd-Ultimate Speed, Jonathan Blair-Georgia, Jacquline Blair-Georgia, Kimani Griffin-North Carolina, Sara Thrall-Washington, Marty Lauffer-Wisconsin and so many more!!!Tonight they introduced the Junior and Senior World Team as well as the staff. This is the largest group of staff members attending with the World Team. They are a great bunch of coaches and parents and I expect that they will do a wonderful job!! Good luck to Team USA in SPAIN.Ross Creveling is doing the LIVE FEED voice-over and I had an opportunity to speak with him for a few minutes tonight. It was pretty cool except he gave ME the headset with all of the scratchy noise!!! I hope that I was the only one that heard it because it drove me nuts (which is a short trip anyway!). How cool it must be to be sitting at home in your torn, old ugly, but very comfortable PJ's, with your feet up, a bag of chips and maybe a soda (if you're not skating this is ok-LOL) and watching the most incredible skating going on. No commercial breaks (can be a problem if you need to run to the restroom though... you might miss some more action) so that you can watch from start to finish. WOW... and you haven't spent a dime!! I may try coaching that way next year!!! :)We start back tomorrow morning with the doors opening in just 4 hours at 5:30am. That's right. I am here typing away at 1:43am Central Standard Time. The thunder and lightening is incredible and almost a distraction as I finish tonight's blurb. With the roar of the rain God's yelling loud and long, we were forced to stop this evening's skating at the Junior Ladies as we waited to see if the roof leak would continue to do so onto the skating track area. Due to the heavy rain storm coming through Lincoln, it just seemed to overload the air conditioning vent area with water. And of course it had no where else to go but on the skating floor! I do feel sorry for the athletes that were all fired up and ready to skate. That's hard to get yourself psyched up and then let down and told to be back in the building in 7 and a-half hours and be ready to do it all over again. BUT...... in all fairness...... every skater in each of those sprint finals will have the same conditions. It will be the skater who will go right back to their room, lay everything out for tomorrow morning, who won't be bummed out, who will think positive thoughts, who will get up and eat something, warm-up properly and return to the auditorium ready to RIP those other skaters apart. THOSE will be the skaters to succeed!!! As I said, each of the 6 finalists in each of the divisions will have the same advantage or disadvantage, depending on how they look at it!With that in mind..... I need to shut down this monster! I hope that either I can bring you photos or that Mark Virtue will loan me a few to post here! Have a great night and I hope we see you bright and early in the AM. Linda :)

INDOOR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS (IDN)

I had hoped to start getting you all pumped up this past week, but as some of you know, I have been sick off and on (mostly on) since Outdoor Nationals. I am not sure how much information that I will be able to transcribe it each day..... but if I see it and it's exciting.... you are going to hear about it!!!!

I love watching speed skating, and if at all possible, I love writing about it so that YOU feel as if you are right here in the seat next to me. Imagine it as we elbow each other when a skater throws a bomb pass and we can't believe the ref didn't see it!! What was he looking at??? How could he miss it???? And before we know it the next race is up... they are off the line... did you see the skater on the wall jump? That's right... good thing they brought them back to the line. Skaters are in the "set position" and the whole auditorium is quite.... the gun goes off and the skater in lane 3 pushes hard with the right foot as the skater in lane 4 digs down into the floor with their left foot. Both skaters pushing against each other go no where... except down.

These are the stories and the excitement I want to bring to you. And if I'm lucky, a good picture or two. So I hope that you will join me starting tomorrow as I once again become.... the SPEED SKATING SPECTATOR! Linda Wood :)
p.s some of our team members show off our new uniform.... it was the only indoor photo that I had available!!! ;)